Television

Friday, September 30, 2016

DEA pays tens of millions of dollars to informants

The Drug Enforcement Administration paid its
informants tens of millions of dollars even after at least one of them lied in
court, reported McClatchy.

That’s according
to a new report by the Justice Department inspector general, which
scrutinized DEA offices across the country, including Sacramento. The inspector
general’s auditors found that more than 9,000 law enforcement sources had been
paid a total of $237 million for information or services.

Yet the DEA, which relies on such informants to
investigate drug trafficking, did not “adequately” oversee the money flowing to
its more than 18,000 sources between Oct. 2010 and Sept. 2015, Thursday’s
report said.

The sloppiness “exposes the DEA to an unacceptably
increased potential for fraud, waste and abuse, particularly given the
frequency with which DEA offices use and pay confidential sources,” the
inspector general’s office said.

The DEA, for instance, prohibits paying informants
who were “deactivated” because of arrest warrants or other serious offenses,
but auditors found one had been used after being deactivated for lying during
trials and depositions. The source was paid more than $469,000 and used by 13
offices for five more years.

The inspector general’s office estimated the DEA may
have paid about $9.4 million to more than 800 previously deactivated sources.
The office, however, said it had received shoddy data, and it could not say
definitively why they were deactivated.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.